When You Wake
by cattail prophetess
Summary: almost ginny/cho, but nothing to get your knickers in a twist about. talking in a room filled with golden leaves... memorizing wars... singing about roses and necks.


Disclaimer: The characters belong to JK Rowling, who's such a love. Neither of the songs is mine. I learned one from my rina second cousin and neither of us knows who it belongs to, and I read the other in a beautiful short story called How I Contemplated The World From The Detroit House Of Correction And Began My Life Over Again, which I think Joyce Carol Oates wrote.  
  
Warning: This *is* implied slash, but I honestly can't see how anyone would find it offensive.   
  
She's such a sweet girl really- her sun-brushed hair curving around her face, springing into a frame. Better than autumn leaves. And her eyes...  
I bite my lip. She's little anyway; well, not little, but too young for me. I expect. I've never had a girl before; maybe I'm different there.  
Maybe they're different. I've never understood girls, despite being one myself- they seem so cluttered, so lost in their many layers. It's like they're wrapped in yards and yards of cloth, cotton or silk, and they don't want you to see who they really are. But she looks honest to me, the way she sings wordlessly to herself, leaves her mouth open as she breathes.  
"Hey," I say, both to her and myself. We're both drifting away into dreamland; or perhaps I'm only drifting away because she is. She's the kind of person who makes everything look pretty.  
"Sorry," she says softly. "Was I singing again?"  
I realize that she was. "Yeah." I almost tell her I like it, but that would sound...  
She blows her hair out of her eyes, so vulnerable. "I'm sorry," she says again. "Sometimes I just can't stop. I always got teased for it. Especially when I was little. Or... well, I haven't been doing it for a while now. A few years ago I told myself I'd stop, and I did- but recently it's seemed to stop mattering to me."  
"Good," I say. "Stupid thing to tease someone about. Who did it?"  
"Everyone."  
"Oh. I'm sorry." Could've been me, I think. Some people are born awkward, voices too loud or too quiet, jerky movements. It's nothing you can control, just the way you are. Even if you're the most sure person on the inside- maybe she is?- you're always nervous and fumbling, easily picked on. And I'm the other way around. If anyone could see through my skin- "That must have been awful."  
"It was all right," she says graciously, shrugging a little too sharp. Poor love. "So shall we begin?"  
I'm tutoring her. She's got terrible grades apparently, this sweet girl with the autumn hair. "I don't know why," she said apologetically, when she first asked me for help. "No, I do know why, I was just trying to make you think I was an innocent victim of stupidity. I've been slacking off for the longest time and now that I'm trying again I don't know all these things I need to know. I was wondering if you could help me." Now that I think of it she was really quite brave to seek me out, an older girl she'd never even spoken to.  
"Okay," I say as gently as I can- I'm not a gentle person really, but she keeps calling up these strange urges in me, and I keep wanting to protect her from the world. Although I never could, of course. "The thing you've got to remember is that-" I check her text to see where she is. "You've been studying battles this year?"  
She nods.  
"I see why you've been having trouble. I [I/]hate[I] battles, myself- all those ridiculous names and dates. I don't know why we're supposed to admire these people for murder, anyway. I think that's all war is."  
She grins broadly. "I always felt the same way." I feel as though I've been given some gift, shiny and golden, semiprecious. I don't know why. "But I suppose I've got to do it if I want to pass and give my mother some peace of mind. She's always mad at me and my brothers, she's scared we'll be unemployed and living with her when we're thirty."  
"All mothers are like that, I think." Small talk. Mine isn't. She doesn't care about my grades. She cares about boyfriends and clothes, as though she was stuck in her teenage years and never escaped. A pretty daughter is much more valuable than platinum.  
"I'm sorry," she says for the third time. "I'm distracting you. And me. D'you think we should just memorize them by rote or what?"  
"Probably all you can do," I say, and we go on.  
+++  
We were supposed to finish at six, I know. But for some reason I wasn't looking at the clock, was thinking more of the quiet wisp of her voice, going on about who fought who defeated who massacred who rebelled who warred who changed sides who killed him for it who told them not to who did it anyway. So that when I begin to think we're done and look up to see how much time we've got left, I realize that it's almost eight.  
"We should be at dinner," I say. "Do you think you know it by now?"  
"Oh, yes," she says. "At least I hope I do. If I haven't- well then you'll be hearing from me, won't you?"  
I smile. She smiles. And then suddenly, on an impulse, I say "Look, I like you. I'd like to get to know you. Do you want to go on and be friends?"  
Note again the difference between the awkward and the cool. Despite the way my heart was throbbing up and down and my eyes felt too bright, no ums and ers, no repeated words. I even made eye contact. Not that I should have been afraid to- I only want to be friends, after all, only friends.  
"Oh," she says. "Er... well, yeah. It'd be kind of difficult though- it's so tyrranical here, you've got to put in a lot of effort to, you know, be be friends with someone who isn't in your class or anything. Do you know anywhere we could meet?"  
Meet me at midnight, I almost say, in the castle of ghosts. It was a joke he and I had, because we always felt as though we were keeping it a secret. We weren't really, everyone knew, but because we ourselves were secrets we considered our love a love of secrets as well. "I don't know. You... your brothers know the place from top to bottom, don't they? I always wanted to find some of those places." Although I only do now that I think she might have been there. "Do you know the way to any-"  
She's thinking. "There's one," she says, "that I like a lot. It's really quite cool, and they don't like it much. It's really close to my room, though, it would take you a long time to get there. You might get caught-"  
"I won't," I say. "I'm allowed in the halls after dark."  
"Oh," she says. "I forgot."  
"So tonight?"  
"Yeah. Maybe... midnight."  
+++  
What, I ask myself roughly, was that about? Asking a girl you don't even know to meet you at midnight in some room you've never seen? You're losing it. If [I/]They[I] found out...  
[I/]They[I] are my friends- my clique, really. Some of them I've almost connected with, but usually we just dance around each other, eat meals together without every really talking about anything. The price of popularity, I'm beginning to suspect. As much as they try to be nice, they're not really true friends. Although I'm beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as a true friend, if he was the last in the world. I could reel off their names for you, all thirteen of them, but what would be the point? They're only names. They don't carry any real significance. They're nothing to me and I'm nothing to them. This is what it means to be pretty. This is what it means to be rich, in some cases. This is what it means not to be awkward like the sweet girl. Don't you envy me? He was the only one who knew.  
And there's the clear cold voice answering. Anything to rise above where I am now. Anything to have a name mean something, something more than letters poised to meet your eye.  
+++  
I leave early and stay up, thinking. I'm such a dreamer, no matter how well I hide it. I'm hoping so much that she'll be real and I'm not even entirely sure why. Once you've had it you can never go back.  
This is how it is for all of us- remember that now. Next time you're eating and you look up at us with blinded eyes. Next time you're jealous of her for being so graceful. Next time you're jealous of him for being so rich. Don't you know? It's our good qualities which weigh us down. It's them that make people expect so much.  
I have a big sister, you know. I'm told I look like her, a little, but I'm not so sure. She's thinner than I am and not as tall. She was even more popular than I am- married the year she graduated. She's so lovely and good and nice and perfect and even I can't hate her for it, she's too good to me.  
She's always been my model. I don't suppose my parents ever sat me down and told me we were rich and high-class and did I know what was expected of me, to be good like her, because I was born into goodness, someday I'd get married like her and carry our perfection on- but I knew it. I've always known it.  
I think my wrongness began early. I didn't get along with the girls I was made to play with, that's the first I can remember of it. They liked to place little china teacups on the grass, pour water into them. I found this terribly boring and didn't know why we couldn't make our own mixtures, but they squealed in horror when I suggested this. Eventually I learned to play along, but I always daydreamed as I played, trying to get away. As I had to pretend and pretend to be a good girl like my sister, I began to live in a world of dreams. After a while it ceased to bother me.  
+++  
I hope she's coming. What if she's not? Maybe it was a joke, maybe someone discovered I'm only strong on the outside and is out to destroy me. Maybe they're angry.  
I'm being stupid, of course. Paranoid. Even I was never this scared before he died, but the fact of his breakability made me realize how sharp and dangerous the world is, and how fragile the inhabitants.  
And here she is. Creeping along the hallway, her long thin spidery legs. "Boo," I whisper for my own amusement, and she jumps.  
"Don't do that," she says, grinning. "Come on, it's this way."  
"I follow, suddenly feeling a little of her shy awkwardness seeping into me as her back grows straighter, her shoulders less hunched. She's in her element, and I am removed from mine. "In here," she says. And runs her fingers over a tiny carving of a rose.  
A small square of wall pushes out until it's a door, and she turns the rose which is now the doorknob. The room it opens into is about the size of mine, square, and all of the walls are painted with raised golden leaf patterns. Autumn leaves. Maybe it's some kind of sign.  
"It's pretty," I say.  
"Yeah," she says. "I know."  
It occurs to me that this isn't how you make friends. Friends you have to do things with, you can't just talk. I'm not quite sure what I was thinking, but she seems to believe I have a plan. It's apparent when she tilts her head upwards and says "Okay, what do we do now?"  
She must think I'm so weird. I can hear my mother's voice in my head. This isn't normal, you don't just take someone to talk to at night. That isn't what friendship is about, it's about looking good, it's about doing what's expected of you. That's what's normal.  
I don't know why I told my sister, but she was talking with me just before her wedding and I felt I almost had to. She liked to think she understood me, and she was always giving me advice and asking me how I was. She knew I was about to start school and she was giving me yards and yards of advice on what to do, telling me the boys there were cute (with a little laugh in her voice, as though she was putting something over on me). I didn't know why I was doing it, but I wanted to tell someone about me and girls (not all girls, and boys too, but some girls always, bright-eyed girls with pale shoulders). So I told her. I could never be sure afterward about the brief moment of hesitation before she hugged me and said of course not, I was just confused. I never spoke with her again; I don't. I know she's not to blame for my wrongness but it makes me angry anyway. Sisters are supposed to listen, and she always said she would.  
She's singing, again, and I think- she's unpopular, she's not going to tell anyone and besides I've got nothing to lose. Might as well ask.  
"What are you singing?"  
Her head sort of jerks straight and she blushes suddenly. I shouldn't have asked. "It's a song my mum used to sing me when I was little," she whispers, like a child. "[I/]Rose, rose, rose, red, shall I ever see thee wed? I shall marry as I will, sir- as I will.[I]"  
Oh God, I think. I know what she had sung to her when she was small. Already I know more about her than I know about almost anyone in the world, except him. She's the only other person I've ever known to tell the truth. "It's pretty. So is that what you always sing?"  
"Usually. There's this other song, but it's not a song really. It's a poem I read somewhere; kind of a strange one, and I like to sing it to myself."  
"So?" I ask. "How does it go?"  
She closes her eyes, the faint flush in her white face. White shoulders. "[I/]There is no reality, only dreams. Your neck may get snapped when you wake. My love is going in circles. She keeps trying to get away. My love is heading downward, and I am heading upward. She is going to crash on the pavement. And I am going to dissolve into the clouds.[I]"  
"I like that," I say, because I think so. Very true. Whoever wrote it must have been insane.  
"Yeah, me too. Do you ever sing?"  
"Oh. No, I don't. I can't sing."  
"Everyone can sing," she says in a surprisingly strong voice. "It's just propaganda that some people can't. Just because you're off-key they doom you to a life of silence and gloom."  
"You're one to talk," I mutter, "you've got a lovely voice." It's true- high and clear and light, like melting candlewax. And her hair the flame.  
She's a bit embarrassed. "So did you just want to talk, or-"  
"I don't know," I say. "Yeah. I don't know why, but I never talk to anyone and you seemed like you might be worth talking to."  
"What do you mean, you never talk to anyone? You talk to people all the time. You're one of the most popular people in school-"  
"Right," I say. "And I talk all the time about school and teachers and clothes, but never about anything really interesting or important. I know it was stupid to just choose a person to talk to, but when you're bereaved people sometimes make exceptions for odd behavior."  
"Oh," she says. "I know what you mean."  
"About the poem," I begin. "That happens to me every so often, when I feel like I'm going to drift away and disappear into the clouds. Do you ever?"  
"All the time," she says, surprisingly animated. "I never stop. I'm always dreaming. But then maybe I'm the one heading downward, you know? I'm kind of afraid that if I ever have a love, you know, that she's going to bring me down to reality and it'll kill me, and I'll give her more dreams than she could possibly bear. And we'll both have snapped necks."  
"Really?" I ask. "That's happened to me." And it has. He filled me with cotton fluff and flew me over meadows green, and when the kitestring was gone I simply fell, breaking all my bones on the pavement.  
"Me too," she says. "Kind of. But I expect I can't just freeze up because I'm afraid of what I'd do to her- God. I said 'her,' didn't I? A minute ago when I was talking to you, too... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tell you."  
"It's okay," I say. "I mean, of course it is."  
"It's just I feel so much safer," she says. "I don't quite understand how you're supposed to distinguish between genders, only like one- or at least I didn't used to. But there was this boy once, who I thought I loved- two boys, in fact. One of them almost killed me, and the other never looked at me. So now I just seem to like girls."  
"It's understandable."  
"Thanks." She's running thin pale fingers over the leaves on the wall, so young. How do these things happen? "Most of my family knows, but that's about it. I don't trust other kids. I always thought I'd know I really had a friend if I could tell them- now that I think about it, must be you."  
I smile. "I'm biased. I'm that way too- both ways I mean," I add, when she looks vaguely confused. Although we could quite easily have had nothing between us but alliance and appearance.  
"Really?" She says that too much. I had a friend when I was small who always answered "No" when I asked it, reversing whatever statement she'd made before. It hurt more than I liked to admit. I wonder where she is now, can't remember what she was put in.  
"Yes."  
"You're nice," she says. "Are you sure you're not just making it up to make me feel better?"  
"Would I do that?"  
"I dunno. I don't know you, do I?"  
Better than anyone else alive. "I wouldn't. At least not for someone like you- I don't think you like being lied to."  
"No," she says, almost to herself. "No, I don't."  
+++  
"Can I walk you back to your room?" she says hours later. "Most of the way?"  
"You'll have to go all the way back yourself, silly." I can call her this. "You'll get caught by the demon cat."  
"The demon cat. All right then. Could you walk [I/]me[I] back then?"  
I nod, because I'd like to. We skirt our way through quiet halls and I'm careful not to put my arm around her, because I keep feeling as though I should.  
"You know," I say, "time's sort of faster with you. There aren't very many people who can make that happen. Did anyone ever tell you that?"  
"No. Is it really?"  
"Of course."  
"It's the same thing with you."  
I wonder.  
"Okay," she says, "this is how you get in."  
"Can she see?" I ask.  
"Of course I can!"  
I jump back. We haven't anything like that; we write it on a slip of paper and put it in through the wall. I can't say it's not appropriate.  
"See you," she says.  
"Oh," I say. "Goodbye then. Night. Should we meet-"  
"Yeah. I'll meet you to talk about it, okay? Breakfast maybe."  
"Yes."  
She climbs in and then in a quiet moment just before it closes she says "You probably already know this, but I think you're pretty."  
I didn't know.  
+++  
So here I am walking back and thinking about a lot of things. I've been sort of praying to him recently, closing my eyes and whispering things he can maybe hear. Normally they're pleading, in case the dead have some sort of power, but sometimes I just talk. As it is tonight- I don't shut my eyes but I do whisper to him, same as I did when he lived and we met at midnight.  
"[I/]Thank you for the reality. I hope you don't mind, because you know I do sort of like her, but she's really amazing, like you were, and true, and I was so afraid there wasn't anyone else like that. And you probably did it, because it's the kind of thing you'd do for me, so... thank you.[I]"  
There's no answer, but I didn't expect one. And so I walk along, singing off-key to myself and wondering about the truth. "[I/]Rose, rose, rose red. Shall I ever see thee wed? I shall marry as I will, sir. As I will...[I]" 


End file.
